


Knowing

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Episode Related, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-20
Updated: 2008-11-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: Some angsty Jim introspection just before Jim 'borrows' Blair's dissertation chapter in 'Night Shift'.





	Knowing

Blair likes to know things. He likes to know how his favourite students are doing, which Rainier professor just made a total ass of himself in front of his class, who's fucking who on campus and whether they're doing it literally or metaphorically. He likes to know what his friends think about that ridiculous article in the American Journal of Anthropology, and what the dead bodies that come Jim's way look like, even though they disgust and upset him.

Blair likes to know about sentinels, which has gone without explicit statement for years because it's implicit in every question he asks Jim and every note he scribbles down in notebooks and on loose paper and into the files on his laptop.

Blair likes to know things, and he winnows information the way that a combine harvester winnows grain. He knows how to cook eggs the way that Jim likes to eat them. He knows Jim's bank card number and he knows how to forge Jim's signature. He knows about the scrapbook that Jim's Dad kept for years, and Jim really does not want to know how Blair found about that. It implies that Jim's father has about the same defences against Blair's enquiring mind, reproachful eyes and delightedly enthused smile that Jim does, and that's just scary. 

Blair likes to know things, even when they are absolutely none of his business. Things about sex, and god, the injured expression he wears if Jim implies that maybe his interest isn't entirely academic. Things about what Jim did in the Rangers. The kid's read Jack Kelso's book - again - and his imagination runs away with him. Next thing you know it's another round of pointed questions of the intellectually cynical variety. 

Jim knows a few things too. He knows that he could demonstrate some of the things that he did in the Rangers, but he doesn't want to hurt Blair like that - watch him turn pale and sweaty, watch his face twist and hear his voice saw through his throat - so he won't. He knows that he could tell a few things, but he won't. It's one thing listening to Blair make the occasional dig about American imperialism abroad, but it's another thing listening to the shocked absence of speech that always comes over people who've just discovered what they didn't really want to know after all. Jim's defences hold against Blair's need to know, buttressed as they are by Governmental oaths and promises, and consequences that aren't entirely governmental.

Jim knows that he's not always a particularly nice person, but that's fine because nice guys aren't anything Jim's world has ever needed. And he knows that he tries to be a nice guy, a good guy around Blair, who's both those things even when he's being a manipulative little shit. What Jim doesn't know is what's in Blair's dissertation, cocooned in its woven ethnic-patterned cover. Jim's hand hovers above it, trembling, before he sweeps the file into his grasp with a nonchalance that would make anyone seeing him narrow their eyes and wonder. But no-one does, because the noisy chaos of the PD tonight is the perfect shield.

Jim saunters towards the bathroom with his prize. Blair isn't the only person who likes to know things.


End file.
